E-Paper
Bihar polls: Top court asks EC to furnish details of 366k deleted voters
Supreme Court asks Election Commission for details on 3.66 lakh deleted voters in Bihar, amid concerns over transparency before upcoming elections.
A day after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the Bihar assembly poll schedule, the Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the commission to furnish information about the nearly 3.66 lakh additional voters deleted from the final electoral rolls, while clarifying that it will not conduct any “roving inquiry” into the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls unless there is credible proof that genuine voters were wrongfully excluded.
A bench of justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi directed ECI to collate details of the deletions and adjourned the hearing to October 9, observing that any further intervention at this stage would only be “in aid of the electoral process so that confidence in it is fortified.”
“The question of conducting any exercise before this court would arise only when there are some substantial number of examples. If we are prima facie satisfied that there is substance in the averments, we will look into it, but it cannot be a roving inquiry,” the bench said, responding to submissions by advocate Prashant Bhushan for petitioner NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Bhushan, appearing along with senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Gopal Sankaranarayanan, and advocate Vrinda Grover, contended that SIR had led to a “disproportionate exclusion of women, Muslims and other vulnerable sections.” He pointed out that while the ECI had furnished the list of 6.5 million voters whose names were deleted during the draft stage after the court’s earlier direction, it had not published the list of 3.66 lakh additional deletions made after objections to the draft rolls, nor issued “speaking orders” to those affected.
“They have not given a list of 3.66 lakh voters deleted due to objections... persons who are deleted do not get any notice or reason. There is no question of appeal because no one knows,” Singhvi submitted, adding that the least t ECI could do was to inform the affected voters.
According to the ECI, the figure of 3.66 lakh represents voters found ineligible during the final verification round after the initial deletion of around 6.5 million names during the SIR process. Following the completion of the exercise, the final electoral roll for the Bihar assembly elections now has 74.2 million voters, who will be eligible to vote in the upcoming polls. The draft list, released on August 1, recorded 72.4 million voters.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for ECI, opposed the plea, arguing that each deletion order was communicated to the individual concerned. “Every individual voter deleted has been given the order,” he said. He maintained that most of the newly added names were genuine first-time voters, and that no complaints have been filed before the ECI by any affected individual so far.
The bench, however, said that if the petitioners could produce examples of voters who were not informed about their deletion or whose appeals were pending, the court would direct ECI to act. “If anyone can give the list of voters out of these 3.66 lakh who have not received orders, we will direct EC to give them orders. Everyone has a right to appeal,” the bench remarked.
The bench also told ECI that it had both the draft and final lists and could easily cull out the deletions: “You have the draft list; you have the final list. Just cull out the names from the two lists and give to us.”
While the petitioners urged that ECI publish both lists -- those deleted and those added -- on its website to ensure transparency, the bench said that it must first be shown that genuine voters were excluded. “We have to be prima facie satisfied that intervention is required,” reiterated the bench, cautioning against speculative or politically motivated challenges to the revision process.
Bhushan offered to file affidavits with examples of affected voters. “We can bring 100 people... how many your lordships want? There’s en masse violation,” Bhushan said, to which the bench responded that the case must be supported by “considerable number of concrete examples.”
ECI will now place before the court relevant data and responses, while the petitioners have been permitted to file affidavits identifying affected individuals.
The hearing came a day after the Election Commission announced that Bihar will go to polls in two phases -- on November 6 and November 11, with counting scheduled for November 14. Of the state’s 243 seats, 121 constituencies will vote in the first phase and the rest in the second. The election will be conducted on the basis of the final electoral roll of 74.2 million voters.
Tuesday’s hearing also builds on the court’s September 15 order, when it declined to restrain the ECI from continuing with SIR of electoral rolls across states, including Bihar. Then too, the bench had emphasised that as a constitutional body, the ECI must be presumed to act in accordance with its responsibilities, though any breach could invite judicial scrutiny.
The petitions led by ADR and civil society groups have questioned the transparency of the SIR process, alleging large-scale deletions and a lack of publicly available data on claims, objections, and final inclusions. ECI has maintained that the revision was conducted lawfully under Article 324 of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, 1950, with the aim of purifying the rolls before the upcoming elections.
